The Cowboy Meets His Match. Meagan McKinney

her head bumping into that same muscle-bunched thigh she had just been looking at. Flustered, she straightened and stuck the nob on the volume control.

      “Perhaps with the money you make from guiding this trip,” she suggested in a baiting tone, “you can put a down payment on a new pickup.”

      His sun-slitted eyes cut to her, then back to the road. The hat kept half of his face in shadow.

      “If pickup trucks’re status,” he assured her, “then I got plenty. I drive this old gal because I happen to like her. The older the violin, the sweeter the music.”

      “Just a suggestion.” She settled back against the worn seat. “I just figured a big rodeo star like you’re supposed to be would want to show off a bit, that’s all.”

      He gave a snort. “Stars live in Hollywood. And rodeo ain’t my business, it’s my love.”

      She waited, but he didn’t volunteer any more information.

      “Whatever your business,” she offered, “Hazel certainly does speak well of you.” Her tone also seemed to add There’s no accounting for taste.

      “Hazel and me think a lot alike. Especially about Mystery.”

      The accusation in his tone made her bristle. For a moment she pretended to stare at a dead snake she spotted hanging from a farmer’s fence—a local custom to entice the rain. But his not-so-subtle reminder that she was an unwelcome outsider finally prompted her to retort.

      “If you’re trying to make some point about foreigners,” she told him archly, “don’t let me scare you.”

      “The point is simple. The empty spaces are dwindling out West. And stupidity and greed and Eastern capital will ruin them. Hazel is doing her best to fight it. But she might as well try to hold the ocean back with a broom.”

      “Because of people like me, you mean?”

      “Maybe not you, exactly,” he conceded reluctantly.

      “But like my father, right? Trying to push through his Mountain View residential park with its aerial tramway?”

      “Look, I was raised not to speak bad of a person’s parents to their face. So I’ll leave names out of it, okay? But we’ve got us a few folks around Mystery Valley that don’t like boomtowners. We don’t need people who come into town just to profit quick and then move on—leaving us with the mess.”

      She started to speak. But he pointedly reached over and cranked the radio volume back up, letting music drown her out.

      “‘Why is the rich man always dancing,”’ he twanged along with the singer on the radio, “‘while the poor man pays the band?”’

      Around noon on Tuesday Hazel stepped outside into the coppery sunshine of her front yard. Her Prussian-blue eyes gazed toward the distant, serrated peaks of the mountains. If all had gone well this morning, by now A.J. and Jacquelyn should be on the trail.

      “As the twig is bent,” Hazel said softly to the beautiful summer day, “so the tree shall grow.”

      She’d done her level best to get her ambitious plan off to a strong start. If she did the thing right, then her beloved town would still be here generations from now—and still worthy of the love she felt for it. It was the perfect time to execute the plan. She was still sharp and plenty spry. And although she was still Montana’s cattle queen, she had a top-notch foreman running most of the operation now. She had plenty of time for the one place on God’s green earth she loved best of all. Her Mystery was more than just old buildings and monuments. It was also a collective legacy, the communal memory of a shared past. And perhaps most important of all: it was the home of ghosts who still lived there, their voices whispering in the skitter of autumn leaves, howling in the fierce winter winds.

      Behind the old woman, in the kitchen, a radio deejay’s voice droned on unnoticed.

      “…this weather advisory just received here at KTIX in Lewistown. You cattlemen out there with stock up in the high-altitude summer pastures might want to drive them down to lower slopes during the next couple of days. The National Weather Service has just forecast a late-summer snowstorm for the front ranges of the northern Rockies. Up to thirty inches could be dumped on the peaks, greatly increasing the danger of avalanches and flash floods. Batten down, folks! Looks like La Niña can throw tantrums even in the Big Sky Country…”

      Five

      “You’ll ride this one,” A.J. informed Jacquelyn in a curt tone that bordered on surly.

      He led one of the geldings down the short ramp behind the trailer.

      “It’s a good animal, but tricky as a redheaded woman. Watch him, especially when you cinch the girth. He likes to hold in air so he can dump the rider later.”

      She studied the unlikely steed. The mustangs, with their stunted stature and barrel chests, struck her as ugly, ungracious animals. But they did have impressive muscle definition and powerful haunches.

      “Yours is called Roman Nose,” he added. “He was named after a renegade chief who led the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers in this area.”

      “I know who he was,” she answered, impressed with his knowledge but unwilling to show it.

      “Oh, yeah, that’s right. Y’all do research, don’cha?”

      By now she was too dismayed to rise to his bait. The mountain ride wasn’t the most brilliant endeavor she’d ever agreed to, but she was stuck with it now.

      Or was she? She glanced all around, trying to decide if she was really going to do this.

      The spot hardly seemed like an auspicious start to a ride Hazel promised would change her life. A.J. had referred to this area as a “jumping off place”—a little foothills hamlet called Truth or Dare, population 740. Last century it had been a stage-relay station. Now it was the last cluster of gas stations, restaurants and motels before the short-grass foothills gave way to the riotous upheaval of the Rocky Mountains.

      “Heads up!” he shouted. He had moved to the bed of the truck and was tossing out supplies. Despite his warning, the pack he’d tossed toward her rolled into her legs hard enough to almost knock her down.

      “Look,” he told her, his face granite edged. “I ain’t talking to hear my own voice. Pay attention! I said to start rigging your horse. You’ll have to adjust those stirrups for your legs.”

      She sent him a resentful stare. Then she lugged the worn saddle over to where she’d tethered Roman Nose in a patch of lush grass. They were leaving A.J.’s truck and trailer parked safely in a lot behind a gas station on the western edge of town. From here the mountains were so close she could clearly make out the blue columbine and white Queen Anne’s lace dotting their lower slopes.